Solace
by Salomedancing
Summary: Night after night Nyssa dreamt about her father.


**AN: This started out much different from how it ended. Usually I have a very clear idea of how a fic should start and end, but this story has twisted around itself several times. It was also very hard to write. I always felt that the Master and Nyssa must have a very odd connection, though it was hardly touched in the series. I have written a bit more about that here. So this fic is about that, and it's also a story about loss and grief. I'm not sure if it is very good at all, but I needed to write it.**

I.

Nyssa had still been a child when her father died. A princess, the cherished only daughter, raised to live her life in the best of worlds. So filled with love and the belief that goodness was such a compelling force that even the most evil would succumb. Then her father was murdered, and she didn't even have a body to grieve over because his body still lived. The evil that inhabited it imbued it with youth and vigour and laughter, but she could still see Tremas in him and that cut like knives in her heart.

She was still reeling from her grief and shock when Traken was destroyed and she was all alone. She knew she was lucky because she found new friends. The enigmatic Doctor and his companions she so quickly grew to love and who loved her. Still, they were aliens, strangers to her world and her views and the loneliness and sorrow inside her ached, leaving an emptiness that no friendship could fill.

One night she dreamt about her father. She was walking in her childhood garden and then, around a corner, he stood there waiting for her. She ran into his open arms, burying her face in the velvet cloth of his robes and hugged him hard. Safe in his embrace at last she cried in happiness and he murmured the little nicknames for her that only he knew. The ache inside eased and though she knew it was just a dream, she allowed it to comfort her.

She dreamt about him again and again after that. Such strange dreams just because she always knew she was sleeping. She assumed it was her grief that had created them, giving her what she longed for the most. It was as if her father was still alive in a little pocket that was their garden. She held his hand as they walked there and she told him everything that happened in her life and when she woke up she felt a little bit more whole.

II.

Nyssa grew up in the Doctor's TARDIS, leaving the frightened child she had been behind. Her body matured and her mind expanded and she started to wonder about her dreams. Time healed the most violent grief and though she still loved her father as much as she always had, he was no longer a constant presence in her thoughts. But the dreams never changed. Each and every one as vivid as always and as real as they had always been.

So when she found herself in the garden again, she didn't run into her father's arms as she always had.

"What is the matter, child?"

"I don't think you are my father." The words fell out of her mouth before she had even thought them. When spoken aloud she knew at once that she was right and she wasn't even surprised when he changed into the Master in front of her eyes. Smiling with such glee at her and her betrayed love.

"What a fool you have been, Nyssa. Did you really not suspect anything until now? How naïve, thinking you were dreaming when it was always my will. But in a way I am grateful to be able to drop this charade now. Your childish prattle has been most tiresome to listen to even if it has been a very easy way for me to find out what the dear Doctor has been up to."

She ran then. The garden made way into a place she had never been in before. Vast rooms, staircases and corridors of a shape so foreign to her that she sometimes wasn't sure if they didn't turn under her feet, forcing her in directions that she hadn't chosen herself. The Master's nightmare palace was a labyrinth, and she ran with his laugh mocking her at every turn. She tried to wake herself and found she could not, even when she fell and hurt herself on the polished stone floors. He found her there, weeping on her hands and knees and then he raked into her mind with thoughts like claws. Shock and surprise made her an easy prey that night, her words spilling too easily and giving him what he wanted.

III.

Nyssa should have told the Doctor what happened. How she spent her nights running and hiding in the Master's strange realm, knowing as she did so that he was just playing with her. He found her when he wanted to, when she couldn't run anymore. She should have told him of how the Master could only hurt her there, in the nightmares and when she woke up the pain was gone. She should have told him that sometimes she couldn't hold out until she woke up and that the Master learned many things from her unwilling lips, laughing, always laughing at her shame.

She said nothing. Perhaps because she was ashamed of how she had been used. Perhaps because she wasn't sure, despite it all, that it wasn't all just in her mind, the Master nothing but a mirror over her guilt over still being alive when everyone else was dead. Perhaps because she was so afraid that the Doctor would be able to do nothing to help her, or perhaps it was for all those reasons at the same time.

One night she stopped running, turning toward the Master in anger instead. She didn't know she could be so angry or that she could feel such satisfaction when she managed to rake her nails deep into his face, leaving him bleeding. Whatever the rules he had made up for this place, it seemed to apply to them both, if he could hurt her, she could hurt him back. She always fought him after that and even if he is stronger and more vicious than she could ever be, it gives her a little satisfaction that she doesn't make it easy for him anymore..

IV.

The decision to stay on Terminus frightened her. The TARDIS had been her home for so long and there her friends were, but she left anyway. To do good, to try to save lives. To not be forced to betray those she loved anymore. She felt a small triumph when she told the Master that he couldn't use her as gateway to the Doctor anymore. Not much joy for him to listen to tales of the tedious and never-changing care of the sick.

Still she found herself in the Master's realm again. Not the nightmare castle, this time, but in her own home. She walked homesick through the familiar rooms and found him on a balcony. The low railings opening up to an infinity of stars that was not the night sky over Traken.

"Why am I here again? I told you, I can't tell you anything more about the Doctor."

He smiled at her, but she thought she could read an odd unease behind it. "I am sure there are some things you haven't told me yet."

She understood then, an abrupt, clear understanding, and she laughed. "You are lonely, that's what this is about. And now you have run out of excuses when you can't force me to speak about the Doctor anymore. I see you Master and I see that you are as alone as I am!"

His face darkened. "That's not true."

Suddenly she couldn't stop laughing. "Oh, but it is, it is!"

His hands closed around her arms, so hard she thought the bones would snap. "I don't need you!"

He shook her as she weighed nothing and then he flung her away, over the balustrade and she fell. Down, down into the endless stars and then she woke up in her bed, gasping for air.

V.

Days and weeks and months passed and Nyssa thought she was finally free. It was a strange feeling after so many years, to only dream of what her own mind conjured up. Then she was back in the garden again where she had not been since the night she realised that it was the Master who orchestrated her dreams. It was spring tonight, and she drifted through the foliage in search of an elusive scent that wafted around her. There had been bushes in the real garden, blooming a few nights just before spring faded for summer. Huge, white flowers whose scent had captivated her. She found the bushes at last and there was the Master, standing so still she didn't see him in the darkness until he spoke.

"You used to sneak out of your bed when you were a small child to pluck just these flowers. Do you remember that."

"Yes, but you can't. It's not your memories."

"But I do." The Master said quietly. "I remember finding you asleep with flowers in your hair and still you believed I would not notice that you had mis-behaved."

He plucked one of the flowers and arranged it in her hair, his hands threading softly through the long curls. She didn't move, gazing up into his pale face. There was no anger there tonight and no laughter and her heart seemed to have stopped beating.

"I could be Tremas for you again. Would you want that, Nyssa?"

She could feel tears on her cheeks. "No. My father is dead."

"Is he? Can he be truly gone when I am here to remember?"

"It's false memories."

He turned away and spoke so quietly she had to strain herself to hear him. "Then how come that they don't feel like that, however hard I try to make them go away."

"What do you want? I have nothing, you took everything from me."

"Yes." A bald admission and she was glad that there was no false excuses at least. "But I find that your company pleases me and I have never been in the habit to deny myself of what I want. It's not forever, anyway. You live like a burning flame, just one brief life and then time sweeps you away forever."

"But it is not me you want, not really. And I don't want you."

"And yet, here we are. Tell me, in truth, if you could refuse me, would you?"

She closed her eyes. The only thing she had left from the life she had once had, was her memories. They were already fading, little by little even though she tried to keep them alive. They would slowly grow less vivid as she aged and one day she would be gone and the memories with her. But not for a Time Lord. She had never thought about that, how even when she was dead, someone would still remember Traken. Not by choice, perhaps, but the Master would not forget. And here, in the vastness of a Time Lord's mind, a lost world could be conjured up to live again. Could she let that go?

At length she looked up again. What had her dead father's love for her done to the Master? Something, it seemed, but she found she could not bear to know. Best not to stare too deep into the dragon's eyes, but she still had to answer.

"No." Nyssa finally whispered. "I can't let this go."

"A truce, then?"

She held out her hand, and he took it, his hand cold as ice.

"Yes, a truce."

VI.

Years pass and from time to time Nyssa still find herself walking in her childhood gardens. Here she is still young though she has lived a long life that she has filled with love and friendship and so many saved lives. She hopes it makes up, at least a little, for the devil's bargain she made. She stopped hating the Master a long time ago, but she refuses to name what she feels now.

"Tell me about time," she asks him as they sit in the garden. And he speaks about the infinity of it and above them the stars moves and time pass there as well. Here is past, present and future visible, flickering over the sky like auroras, only so much more. She leans against him and closes her eyes and then it doesn't matter what colour the velvet under her cheek has. She can't remember anymore how Tremas' voice sounded, but she pretends that she does. The Master rests his chin against her head and she supposes he wishes that she is someone else as well. Neither one of them is what the other one truly wants, but each other are the only thing they can get. Sometimes that has to be enough.

_Will you grieve over me when I am gone?_

END


End file.
